Sunday December, 20 2009 saw some mild yet perplexing conditions. When there is a strong south wind at the Mendocino Disc Golf Course a reconsideration of disc choice as well as shot strategy is crucial to a scoring round. This is not newsworthy. For years we've known it. We've shot round after round in wet, south wind conditions. We see gusty winds from the north and score under these conditions. I ask us why is it so hard to compete on a stormy Sunday?
I think I have discerned the answer. There are invisible spirits who live in or around (my investigation has not confirmed where exactly) the course that apparently only show their power during periods of gusty, stormy south winds. Like their counterpart, the Native American Thunderbird, who only arrives on the massive updrafts that accompany strong thunderstorms through middle-america, our spirits fly mostly unseen save the occurrence of just the right conditions. The main difference between the two is that the Thunderbird snatches babies out of cribs for food and our spirits push drives around and create forcefields in the base of the baskets preventing perfectly accurate putts from settling. The Mendocino Disc Golf Course spirits are more like the Gremlins of European lore. Throughout WWII, Gremlins were the cause of countless machinery failures. The Twilight Zone TV series presented a fictional account of one such creature tearing apart the bolts and important parts of an airplane, mid-flight. The Simpsons TV show parodied the scene in which Bart discovered one such creature giving his school bus " the business". The scene played not only on the story of the Gremlin but also incorporated elements of "The Boy Who Cried Wolf". A story whose purpose is to teach us that attracting attention for a pretend emergency will only weaken the reaction to a real one. Players may have been reluctant to share their stories of the Mendocino Disc Golf Course spirits because of the entrenched lessons we have learned through stories like "The Boy Who Cried Wolf".
WOLF!!!
These spirits exist and we should share our stories. By bringing them to light, we marginalize the spirits and take away their power. You see, when we go to bed at night, we enter a "nether zone", or "twilight zone". It is at this time that the spirits thrive and remind us of the deeds they have done during our disc golf rounds. If we share our stories, then the power of the spirits is weakened and thus we can play freely in these stormy conditions.
There must have been a "pow-wow" between Carey, Brady and I before the round. We all managed to weaken the spirit's powers just enough to eek out a -2 handicapped round. Well played gentlemen. I'm sure we could all point out a few chain outs, a few "how the heck did that disc do that?" moments. Up on the top of the world, the three finalists, Carey, Brady and the author of this piece flipped discs and determined the throwing order. Carey missed long, Brady missed long and I missed low. We finished to hole, Brady 4, Me, 4, and Carey 5. Back up we went to the chorus of new rules and ideas for how to finish out. I missed long and Brady laid up in the middle of the field. As is shown by a previous post which lays out the fictional roots of the laying up strategy, I am a proponent of the shot. Apparently the crowd was not. Despite being told that his shot did not count, Brady and I came down and played out our shots. Brady scoring 4 and Myself shooting 5. Brady wins, I got second and Carey earned a well played third place.
The question raised is how do we officially end a tie?
I open this up to discussion.
Congrats Brady and let's end the reign of terror of the Mendocino Disc Golf Course spirits.
